Category: Politics

“You’ll never regret it!” Gus Hall welcomes me into the Party.

[A shorter version of this was published two years ago under the title “The anniversary of a foolish decision.”]

Yours truly, freshly minted young Communist and Xavier Military Institute (High School) senior, 1971

Fifty-five years ago today, on a muggy Tuesday evening, I arrived at 23 West 26th Street, Manhattan. The Communist Party USA was headquartered there, and I was about to be enlisted in its ranks.

Decades later, I learned that in the 1940s, members of the Council on African Affairs, including W. E. B. Du Bois (chairman), Paul Robeson (vice-chairman), and Alphaeus Hunton (educational director), met there to further the cause of Pan-Africanism. Ironically, out of the offices of that edifice and its neighbor, Number 21, built in 1881, the real estate empire spawned by John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) conducted its business.

The diary entry of Xavier High School student and research assistant to Herbert Aptheker for May 25, 1971, reads:

Got over to 23 West 26th Street [headquarters of the Communist Party USA] about 6:45 [P.M.]. Whatta nice place! The meeting was on the third floor, where pictures of famous comrades and covers of magazines and pamphlets were displayed. Gus [Hall, 1910-2000, General Secretary of the Party] answered questions very well. He described how the Party operates from top to bottom, about international relations. My questions concerned the time a college student needs to be an active member and about the 2 vouchers + age stipulations [minimum age, 18]. Rasheed [Storey, 1936-2016] and Gus were the vouchers and I was let in even though I[’m] still 17!!!! I really feel like a complete person. As Gus said to me, I’ll never regret it.

The former lumberjack and steel worker congratulated me with a handshake that risked rendering useless my guitar-pick-holding fingers.

I really have commitment and the enthusiasm and the vision. I’m proud of the Party. I want to make the Party proud of me. [See also Anthony Flood, “Herbert Aptheker: Apothecary for a Red Teenager,” October 25, 2018.]

The building where my formal turning to the political dark side occurred has a storied past. (See “The Astor Offices at Nos. 21 and 23 West 26th Street,” The Daytonian, Saturday, August 4, 2012.) John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912) was a passenger on the Titanic. His son, Vincent (1891-1959), “commissioned the architectural firm Peabody, Wilson & Brown to give No. 23 a neo-Federal facelift in 1922. Only two years later he sold the building for $30,000 to Frederick Vanderbilt Field (1905-2000), a Communist who wrote for the Daily Worker ….”

Thirty-thousand dollars, a century ago. That wouldn’t buy you a bathroom in Manhattan today. And, yes, a Vanderbilt. One of the most intriguing and revealing autobiographies I’ve ever read was his From Right to Left (Lawrence Hill Books, 1983).

May Day flashbacks: Memories of a Communist and working-class leader
Same year, 1971: Gus Hall, in hat (above “MU”), marching on Fifth Avenue in New York City [People’s World Archives]. I believe the bespectacled gent to Hall’s right is Arnold Johnson (1904-1989); James E. Jackson (1914-2007) is the second person to Hall’s left.
On June 9th, two weeks after my induction, I attended Xavier High School’s graduation ceremony at Hunter College (Lexington Avenue and 68th Street). My diary records my regret at missing a talk by James E. Jackson (1914-2007) at the Center for Marxist Education, located at 29 West 15th Street. That building, now a co-op, abuts a 21st-century extension of my pre-Civil War alma mater.

Midday on September 18, 1974, I met fellow Aptheker research assistant (and non-communist Civil Rights Movement historian) Hugh Murray for lunch; at six, I’d meet my then-closest comrade and friend, Kurt Stand, who would be convicted of spying for East Germany in 1998, “to discuss a great decision I feel I must make once and for all.”

On September 23rd, internally still a Stalinist, I entrusted my resignation letter, addressed to the comrade who chaired the meetings, to the doorman of her building located at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 14th Street. “Now I can relax and decide more clearly what I’m going to do with my life.”

To resign was a wiser decision than the one it negated, but it could not reverse the latter’s effects.

Is Green the new Red? Why on Earth does Earth Day fall on Lenin’s birthday?

[Slightly updated, this was first published here two years ago.]

Fifty-six years ago this afternoon, classes being over, I trekked two blocks east from Xavier High School along 16th Street to Union Square Park, where I’d take the No. 6 subway to the Bronx. To my astonishment, the park was jam-packed with people. Thousands of them, in the middle of the day. It had the vibe of an anti-war demo. It was replicated elsewhere in Manhattan and in many other cities around the country, all too familiar to us today in its size and planning.

“What’s this?,” I muttered. “Earth Day?  You gotta be kidding me!”

A newly minted Stalinist (and Jesuit high school student), I knew that that day marked the centennial of the birth of Vladimir Illych Ulanov, known to history as Lenin. Continue reading “Is Green the new Red? Why on Earth does Earth Day fall on Lenin’s birthday?”

The Centenary of Murray N. Rothbard

Hoping Stephan Kinsella or Hans-Hermann Hoppe won’t sue me for copyright violation, I can think of no better way for this site to memorialize this milestone than to reproduce this cornucopia of resources from The Property and Freedom Society, whose site I could not safely open. Since maybe you can’t either, I’m grateful to internet argonaut Dave Lull for copying and pasting its table of contents into an email. (Two humble contributions of mine made the list!)

Murray was a lad of 58, I a mere babe in the libertarian woods (only 29), when I first met him. What a powerful, creatively synthesizing mind; what a generous friend! May God grant him eternal life in the Kingdom!

Anthony Flood

Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment

by Stephan Kinsella on January 9, 2026

– Other PFS books –

Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026).

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was one of the world’s greatest champions of the human liberty. In his honor, and to commemorate his 100th birthday, on March 2, 2026, the Property and Freedom Society (PFS) has assembled this collection of tributes to and commentary on him and his work by PFS members, including many who knew him personally.

This book is released in digital form today, March 2, 2026, on Murray’s 100th birthday. Print, in both paperback and deluxe hardcover, and kindle/epub/pdf versions will be made available shortly.

[Note: the links below will go live March 2, 2026, at 12:01am CST, as will this announcement: Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment Published Today]

Contents

Front Matter

Part 1*

Part 2

Appendix

*Part 1 consists of PFS authors who personally knew or met Rothbard

Related

Biographical

Bibliographical

Correspondence

Tributes/obituaries/memories/commentary

Notes

    1. See The Free Market (June 1986), p. 2, listing papers in “Man, Economy, and Liberty: A Conference in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard.” See also: Jeffrey Tucker and Lew Rockwell, “Man, Economy, and Liberty” (17 November 2009) (Tucker interviews Rockwell about Rothbard’s festschrift, published in 1986 in honor of Rothbard’s sixtieth birthday); Rothbard, Man, Economy, and Liberty (1 March 1986) (Rothbard comments and responds to the speakers and papers presented at the “Man, Economy and Liberty” colloquium hosted by the Mises Institute; backup Youtube); Hoppe, Book Review of Walter Block and Llewellyn H.Rockwell, Jr., eds., Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard, Rev. Austrian Econ. (Vol. 4 Num. 1, 1989). See also Timothy Virkkala, “Bestschrift,” Liberty (September, 1989), p. 63.
    2. “I prefer to remember him as the charming, brilliant, and joyous friend he had been in Liberty‘s formative years. He was the wittiest man I have ever met, the best man with whom to spend an evening in a bar that I ever knew. I miss him enormously.”
    3. excerpted here: “Shortly before Murray [Rothbard] died, I called him to tell him of my plans to run for Congress once again in the 1996 election. He was extremely excited and very encouraging. One thing I am certain of—if Murray could have been with us during the presidential primary in 2008, he would have had a lot to say about it and fun saying it. He would have been very excited. His natural tendency to be optimistic would have been enhanced. He would have loved every minute of it. He would have pushed the “revolution,” especially since he contributed so much to preparing for it. I can just imagine how enthralled he would have been to see college kids burning Federal Reserve notes. He would have led the chant we heard at so many rallies: “End the Fed! End the Fed!”
    4. Duke is former counsel to the Mises Institute. “Murray N. Rothbard is the most intelligent and informed man I have met in my entire life! He like Ludwig von Mises, refused to speak and write only the truth. This hurt Mises and Rothbard financially their entire lives. They were ridiculed by the mainstream economists, government, new media, academics. But they held to the truth that they knew in their minds and hearts. I knew Murray N. Rothbard personally and he was kind to everyone. He was so brilliant that most people were nervous when they met him. Murray usually told a joke or said something weird, strange, funny or whatever to make people comfortable. He did not laugh; he cackled. He was jovial. I had lunches and dinners with him and spoke with him at the Mises institute. I was the attorney for the Mises Institute in the early years. – JRD”

John Milton: Christian Individualist

John Milton (1608-1674)

[Also on Substack.]

For me, it is always a delight to discover that Otis Q. Sellers’s challenge to our presuppositions about ekklēsia has precedents, even if these men would have rejected the conclusions he drew from his studies.

He simply went further than they could go.

Like John Nelson Darby‘s, the theology of civilization-defining poet John Milton (1608-1674) centered on ecclesiology. How ought Christians relate to one another in this age? That was Sellers’s focus, but it yielded a negative judgment, that is, one that emphasized how they ought not relate to each other.

Continue reading “John Milton: Christian Individualist”

They want to shoot you, not refute you. The distractive nature—and ultimate futility—of political struggle.

Rioters cause havoc in Los Angeles as they rail against the US Government
Protesters hold up foreign flags during protests after a series of immigration raids on June 8, 2025 in Los Angeles. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

(Also on Substack)

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. (1 Timothy 2:1-2 ESV)

In my ultra-“progressive” neighborhood, tragically represented in Congress by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, soon in Gracie Mansion by Zohran Mamdani, I noticed flyers taped to the public-facing windows of storefronts. One of them, directed at I.C.E., shouts:

Get the f— out of our city! You f—ing monsters!

Like Christmas, I.C.E. is coming to New York City with lawful orders to remove, as they have from Chicago and other cities, illegal aliens convicted of horrific crimes. Those behind the flyers, however, do not reserve “monsters” for those child predators and sex-traffickers. The tone of the flyer communicates an unwillingness to debate. The offer of debate would only reveal oneself to be an enemy. They have proven willing to act violently on that predicate.

The prospect of removal warms my heart, but it will happen only because of who won the presidency last November (but not, I remind my readers, with a 90% majority). Many who had voted for Trump now voted for Mamdani.

There will be riots. Now, how much time and other precious resources should I allocate to politics, electoral or any other? This question all Christians must answer for themselves. Trump’s victory only shifted probabilities, not the anti-Christian, anti-civilizational center of gravity.

The spiritual rot has set in all over. Culturally, the kids who were under my feet in the Nineties, the grandkids of the antinomian screwballs I knew in the Seventies, are now running things, only they read even less, emote even more.

Turning Point USA loves to debate. God bless them and keep them safe, but we saw what that got Charlie Kirk. That’s their answer. What’s our rebuttal?

The civil war is no longer a cold one. The emotional answer of shit-for-brains brats to Charlie’s “Prove me wrong” challenge is “F— you” and the like, etched on bullet casings. They want to shoot you, not refute you.

If, however, we could not only pray for what Paul urged us to pray for, but also influence the process that determines who will wield that authority, how much time should we spend trying to influence that process? For if hearts and minds are not changed, something only God can bring about, what does it profit us to be sucked into the endless dialectical whirlwind? For those who name the name of Christ, I deem it a distraction from our duty to feed on His Word and adjust our living accordingly.

I’m convinced we’re living in the last days of this dispensation (2 Timothy 3:1-9), a topic I will return to. Those with different convictions may prepare to mobilize troops, Lincoln-like, in response to the Fort Sumter-like attack that’s coming. I will spend the time I have left studying and sharing the Word.

Whose Land?

That is the title of James Parkes’s patient historical narrative. The subtitle is A History of the Peoples of Palestine. “Palestine,” we have collectively forgotten, names a remnant of the Roman Empire, a remnant that has been occupied by many peoples. He wrote it in the late ’40s, long before “the Palestinian people” was popularized by Yassir Arafat in the ’60s to refer exclusively to its Arab inhabitants, a ruse the world fell for and seems stuck with.

Whose Land? came from the pen of a theological liberal. By “liberal” I mean (in part) that he did not believe that the creation of the modern secular state of Israel in 1948 (hereafter simply “Israel” unless the context indicates the biblical House of Israel) fulfilled Old Testament prophecy of the ingathering to The Land of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—simply because he did not think that any event can do such a thing.

Unlike today’s “liberals,” however, he conditionally supported the Zionist response to European antisemitism, the ghoulish rise of which he witnessed in the ’20s and ’30s and which he made the focus of his professional life. In Whose Land?, Parkes affirms the historical and moral right of Jews to national restoration in their ancestral land, but insists that—I’m paraphrasing Parkes—justice and respect for the Arabs with whom the Jews had to deal must (ethically must) inform the Jew in his exercise of his right to, say, purchase a plot of land from a Palestinian Arab. He defends Israel’s legitimacy while warning that Jewish nationalism must never mirror the exclusivism or oppression that Jews themselves had suffered. He bases his non-Scriptural case on commonly shared assumptions—which, in my view, make no sense unless grounded in Scripture. I encourage you to find a copy of Whose Land? and take Parkes’s eloquent, empathetic, and learned historical tour.

I agree with Parkes that Israel fulfills no prophecy, but that’s because I follow the Scriptural exegesis of Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). Sellers rarely commented on current events, so what his view on Israel was is a matter of speculation. (I invite his descendants to settle the matter, if they can.) He was neither pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist as we use those terms. Where Sellers and I differ from Parkes is that we accept the Bible’s self-attestation that its words are God-breathed, a proposition no self-respecting theological liberal takes seriously. (My Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers will, God-willing, be published in 2026.)

Sellers held that Israel must be judged by the same standards to which one would hold any other nation. In the present Dispensation of Grace, resurrected descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have not yet been ingathered to The Land, nor have Christ’s Apostles been resurrected to sit on twelve thrones judging the Israel’s twelve tribes (Matthew 19:28); Israel is not yet mediating between God’s throne and the nations in the eon of the manifest Kingdom of God. Israel is but one of the nations, on equal footing with them. The status of “most favored nation” is reserved for the time when God will govern all nations.

That is, because the Gospel is freely authorized to all nations (Acts 28:28), they are “joint bodies” (σύνσωμα, sussōma: plural; Ephesians 3:6). As we are living in the pre-Kingdom Dispensation of Grace (and the “Silence of God”), however, we who follow the course of history’s “secular surface” still need to know what trend to promote or impede. We’re left to our theoretical devices guided by biblical precepts, one of which, I’d argue, is the just acquisition of property. Continue reading “Whose Land?”

“Prove me wrong.”

That was Charlie Kirk’s challenge on campuses across this country and abroad. Those words were emblazoned on the tents where he invited interlocutors, friendly and unfriendly, to approach the microphone to debate him on political, religious, and cultural topics. He would easily show that, and how, those three “fields” overlapped.

He was a political activist, but before that, by his account, he was a sinner saved by grace who would not shirk his responsibility to sanctify the Lord in his heart before, with gentleness and respect, giving a reason for the hope that was in him in the public square (1 Peter 3:15).

For over fifty years, I’ve weighed the pros and cons of philosophical and theological arguments, always eager (and often anxious) to learn what could be said against my position. But could I have done what Charlie did? At this stage, it is clear the answer is no. I write blog posts and books, but compared to Charlie, I’ve always “played it safe.”

I remember Charlie’s first appearance on Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File on Fox News about a dozen years ago and then followed his career with some, but not great, interest. The recruitment of young people to the conservative cause, however important, was for me a side-show. Frankly, and this says more about him than me, if he hadn’t been murdered yesterday I wouldn’t be writing about him today.

But it was not until yesterday that I realized how important his mission of preparing tomorrow’s leaders is and how much he accomplished to that end, a legacy that millions will build on. I find it surreal that I’m following the aftermath of his assassination on the 24th anniversary of 9/11, when he was a lad of eight years.

I only voted for Trump; Kirk played an indispensable role in persuading millions of younger voters to do likewise. From that perspective, my differences with Charlie over, say, apologetical methodology are neither here nor there. He was a tremendous force for the good of order we call Western Civilization. Read William Kirkpatrick’s “The Civilizational Struggle That No One Talks About,” published a few weeks ago, and tell me America doesn’t need an army of Charlie Kirks. And then marvel at the how far he went in raising such an army.

He was as productive as he was creative and courageous; the more I learn about him, the more impressed I am. (Not that impressing me is a criterion of anything important.)

The Left doesn’t have a Donald Trump but, even worse for them, they don’t have a Charlie Kirk, whose legacy is deep bench of future leaders of a movement which does not depend upon the fortunes of one person. When a young person would ask him, “Who’s the next Charlie Kirk?,” his answer was always, “You are the next Charlie Kirk.”

I look forward to learning more about a man whom, I’m ashamed to admit, I underestimated. My poor words cannot compete with the encomia pouring in from those who knew this husband and father and autodidact who commanded every stage he strode upon and whose life’s work I’m sure I’m benefiting from in ways I cannot yet see. So I’ll stop. (Better late than never.)

Treat yourself to his encounters with the human refuse of our miseducational system on YouTube.com. Read his 2024 book, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West. You’ll be the better for it.

Prove me wrong.

If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool Ownership

The history of the Industrial Revolution—how feudalism’s serfs became capitalism’s propertyless proletarians—does not make for pleasant reading. It was not, however, the unrelieved tragedy of Marxist propaganda. On the contrary. This Labor Day, I reproduce the 21st chapter of my Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic (2022), which, with the help of Nobel Laureate Friedrich von Hayek, highlights that story’s pro-life dimension. (“Mr. Ferrara” refers to Christopher Ferrara, the Catholic Distributist author of my book’s foil, The Church and the Libertarian.)

That chapter’s title came to me out of the blue when I wrote its ancestor post for my now-defunct blog, anarcho-capitalist.com, perhaps in 2011. Remembering as a kid enjoying Trini Lopez’s hit in 1963, I thought it an ironically fitting title: serfs did lose the economic utility of their hammers and other tools, and were left with only their labor to sell using machines they no more owned than they owned the commodities that issued from them. But, I argue, they gained so much more.

“I still call myself a communist,” Pete Seeger (1919-2014) proclaimed as late as 1995.

The opportunities now open to them, not the least of which was seeing more of their children grow up to give them grandkids, mean nothing to Communists, excuse me, Progressives who sang “If I Had a Hammer” around the campfire, at rallies, and on the concert stage. Like “Imagine,” John Lennon’s ode to godless communism, “If I Had a Hammer” was an innocent-sounding, mesmerizing, aspirational hymn to their collectivist designs, starting with its Red composer, Pete Seeger in 1949, and continuing with Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962. With Lopez, the ballad reached No. 3—and my ears. For the rest of the tune’s discography, see the Wikipedia entry.

If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool Ownership

Now, about the “propertyless paupers” of Mr. Ferrara’s solicitude, Hayek wrote in his own contribution to the previously cited volume:

Discussions of the effects of the rise of modern industry on the working classes refer almost always to the conditions in England in the first half of the nineteenth century; yet the great change to which they refer had commenced much earlier and by then had quite a long history and had spread far beyond England. The freedom of economic activity which in England had provide so favorable to the rapid growth of wealth was probably in the first instance an almost accidental by-product of the limitations which the revolution of the seventeenth century had placed on the powers of government; and only after its beneficial effects had come to be widely noticed did the economists later undertake to explain the connection and to argue for the removal of the remaining barriers to commercial freedom.[1]

Self-interested lords may have intended only to assert their own interests against the monarch, but they unleashed a wave of “beneficial effects” that many beyond them enjoyed. The prescient among them, including some economists, thought it would be good to “roll out” the idea of limited government even further. But Mr. Ferrara’s emphasis on tool-ownership—“the few . . . in possession of the means of production”—is a Distributist “tell” that merits a comment.

Continue reading “If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool Ownership”

The good of order, currently under increasingly violent attack, explained.

In light of the cold civil war that is slowly but surely hotting up, I thought it apt to excerpt the following theoretical (thus the “natural law” lingo) passages from Chapter 20 of Christ, Capital and Liberty: A Polemic, “What Is ‘The Free Market’?”

* * *

By “real” we mean the logical contrast of the illusory, the delusional, the fictional, the artificial, etc. When we know or suspect that we are in the presence of the latter, we appeal to some notion of the real to negotiate our encounter with it. A good analogy is found in the contrast between the true and the false: the notion of truth emerges only through the experience of falsehood. (If we could never experience being in error, or being deceived or lied to, we’d have no use for a notion of truth.)

Whatever is a function of real entities is also real. A market is a network of exchanges that persons, according to their human nature, spontaneously form. (That is, they do not engage in exchange because they read in some book that that’s what they must do.) Markets are functions of persons, and persons are real. (Persons are entities with causal efficacy, however, markets are not.)

The market is an order—specifically, a network of exchanges—that persons naturally create in pursuit of their flourishing (which exceeds in value their mere biological sustenance and continuance).

Since persons generate that order by acting in accordance with their nature, it is a natural order, one level, aspect, or dimension of several that make up the universal natural order. Violations of that order, which tend toward human self-destruction, is not to be put on the same ontological level as that which contributes to human flourishing. Continue reading “The good of order, currently under increasingly violent attack, explained.”

Trotskyist power didn’t “degenerate” into slavery, but began with it. The irony of C. L. R. James’s support for compulsory labor.

(The series continues)

The essence of War Communism [1918-1921] was that we actually took from the peasant all his surpluses, and sometimes not only the surpluses, but part of the grain the peasant needed for food. We took this in order to meet the requirements of the army and to sustain the worker.—Vladimir Lenin [1]

Kronstadt sailors, 1921, posing with a flag vowing “Death to the bourgeoisie.”

Every communist intellectual, no matter how humanistically educated, has an ethical Achilles’ Heel. C. L. R. James was no exception. For years, I’ve been fascinated by his story and ideas. (Feel free to search his name on this site.) Every so often, however, I splash my face with cold water to remind myself of the horrors that James shut out of view (when he didn’t rationalize them outright). If I’ve created the impression that I’m starry-eyed over an intellectual’s literary achievement at the expense of flesh-and-blood victims of the policies he owned, then I must counter that impression.

In the mid-1930s, James was an apologist for Lenin and Trotsky’s “War Communism,”[2] i.e., bloody totalitarian dictatorship, including their suppression of the revolutionary sailors at the Kronstadt naval base in March 1921.[3]  That is, the Pan Africanist James sided with a social system as evil as the one that had enslaved Robert Alexander James, his grandfather, in the New World.

After creating the Red Army, Trotsky introduced into factories and fields an army’s characteristic regimentation of labor, thereby helping to install new slave masters to replace Russian serfdom’s. Some socialists noticed. As Paul Avrich, cited in the first note above, wrote:

Menshevik leaders compared the new regimentation to Egyptian slavery, when the Pharaohs used forced labor to build the pyramids. Compulsion, they insisted, would achieve no more success in industry than in agriculture.[4] Continue reading “Trotskyist power didn’t “degenerate” into slavery, but began with it. The irony of C. L. R. James’s support for compulsory labor.”